Driving to the Basket: A Detroit Pistons Podcast - Episode 6: Preseason Takeaways

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

This shorter-than-usual episode examines takeaways from the preseason.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody. My name is Mike and welcome to another episode of the podcast. It's been a significant hiatus. I believe the last time I posted an episode was in July shortly after Summer League. So just by way of explanation of where I've been since then, shortly after I posted that episode, I began to come down with a bit of an illness. That was eventually determined to be mono. For those of you who are unfamiliar with mono, short from mononucleosis, it more or less manifests itself as significance, physical, and mental fatigue. So for the space of about a few months there, I did not record anything, did not write anything. It was more or less just feeling very mentally apathetic. Fortunately,

over the last month or so, I've started to recover with mono. Basically, there's nothing to do but just wait it out and hope it goes away. But wait, we have been feeling more on the up and up. So accordingly, to end with the season coming up, decided to get back to recording the show once more. So today's episode will be on the shorter side, though one never knows I have often in the past decided post a short episode and ended up speaking for about an hour. But it'll just be going over what I believe we learned from the team's performance in preseason. Now before I go any further, I just wanted to announce that my friend and fellow poster on the Pistin subreddit's M-Tommi will shortly be joining the show as a co-host. So definitely looking forward to that. And got a tentative

new name for the podcast. As I've said in previous episodes, you know, initially I titled the podcast rather, the Detroit Pist and Subreddit podcast. I didn't quite have the community involvement that I had anticipated, you know, which is fine. It's just the way things go. But decided it would be fitting to change the name of the podcast as a result. So tentative title we're going with is driving to the basket. You know, driving, of course, reference to Detroit in the auto industry, obviously. So yeah, so there's that and let's just dive straight in. So obviously with preseason, you know, you're not going to have necessarily any super strong takeaways. You know, players can play very differently, but I think there are some things

you can take away from the Pistons preseason performance. So why don't we start with the positives? So positive number one is Christian Wood. Now, what was kind of an unknown quantity? He had yet to catch on in the NBA. He had a pretty good, I believe, 20-game stretch with the New Orleans Pelicans to end the last season. And he was ultimately put on the waiver wire, passed up by 13 teams, because the waiver wire goes by seating in the previous season. The Pistons were the 16th best team. So, pardon me, not 13 teams, I believe.

No, actually 13 teams. the Pelicans and 13 others. So it somehow made his way down to Detroit. And, you know, it's hard to say at that point what you're really going to get from Prish and Wood. Because clearly, you know, nobody decided to pick the guy up. And, you know, he just never really managed to stick. You know, what it looked like coming in is that he would be able to offer quite a bit of offensive polish. But, you know, beyond that, who knows, he had been during his few minutes in the NBA,

A very weak defender also was quite undersized and remains quite undersized for the position at about 610, between 610 and 611 in shoes. And only about 215 pounds, he's quite small. But he came in. It was clear he was going to be, well, number one, he was going to be fighting for the final roster spot. And how he performed, it wouldn't be only how he performed, it would be how he performed in relation to Thonmaker, who was also fighting for the job of Backup Center. In the event, Thonmaker was not good at all. We'll go over that later. And Wood came in, and, you know, he wasn't exactly by any means a world-beater on defense. He certainly had his struggles, especially when he was forced to go up against, you know, the larger centers out there.

Futschovich caused him significant troubles, I believe. You know, Joe Embed, of course, forget about it. It's tough for anybody to stop Mbid. But on the offensive ends, he was definitely a major plus. Now, the guy's quite polished. He's pretty good at making it to the best. He's got, you know, as a rebounder, he's certainly no slouch. He's good at putbacks.

He showed a little bit of range. You know, he's, as a catch-and-shoe three-point shooter on low volume last season, he was in the mid-low 30s. And, you know, that's perfectly acceptable. You know, not great, but certainly acceptable. So, you know, this, this, he's made the roster. I think the backup center minutes are his to lose. and this will be the first time in quite a while, like in fact a very long time.

I don't want to think back to when this might be. Well, I guess it would be Greg Monroe during the first half of the 2014-2015 season before Josh Smith got waived he was coming off the bench. So that was the last time the Pistons had a backup big who was actually capable of generating offense. So that'll definitely be a big thing. Now how it will perform on the defensive end could be a concern

because, you know, the guy can generate the, you know, the odd block here or there, but as a defender, he just leaves a lot to be desired. And that's a significant issue when you're playing with Blake Griffin in particular. Griffin has many, many strengths, as we know. Unfortunately, paint and rim defense are not amongst those. He's a very bad pain in rim defender, rather. So it's pretty important that he have a capable center behind him to protect the rim from the people who will inevitably get by him.

And Wood is just very bad at that. You know, Thonmaker for all his frills is not, there's no slouch as a room protector. He's not good at banging in the paint, of course, against guys, you know, the centers who are often quite a bit larger than he is. But neither is Christian Wood. So that might be an issue, of course, you know, if you can go between a guy who is significantly better on offense and in a bad defender versus a guy who's a decent defender. And a horrible on offense, of course, you go with a guy who can provide that offense for you. So Christian Wood's definitely a bright spot. I don't think he'll be a world-beater,

and it could cause some problems if an injury to Drummond never forces him into the starting lineup, because the Pistons may well turn into one of the worst defensive teams in the league as a result. You know, Drummond isn't great. Well, he is great when he really tries as a defender. He's very good. For the most part, he doesn't try that hard all the time, but either way, he's significantly better than Wood on that ends. Though there's room to go for Wood.

He's not, you know, he's in his mid-20s now. He was drafted back in 2015, I believe, but signs point to him not probably, you know, his defensive upside doesn't seem particularly high. But nonetheless, for the price, and given that he was obtained for nothing, definitely an upside. Upside number two, Derek Rose. Now, Rose, his, you know, the reason he's, he will probably be such, you know, an important member of the team, I don't think he's going to be amazing. Like, who knows, you know, if he can keep up the performance.

from the first half of last season, then fantastic. Maybe one of the better six men in the league. But whatever he may provide, he can create offense for himself. And that was something this team was sorely lacking last season. Blake Griffin was more or less the only guy who could do it. Reggie Jackson's this season went on, became more effective on the pick and roll. But for the most part, it was Blake or nothing.

So just having another guy who can do that, who can run the offense at a fast pace and really create offense for himself is probably going to be a big deal for the team, provided that Rose can stay healthy. It was a little concerning that he didn't hit, I believe, any threes in the preseason. He wasn't really attempting them. He was pretty effective on his typical mid-range offense, but the team kind of needs him to take threes,

because especially if you're going to have Luke Canard handling the ball. But, you know, that's a significant upside in any event. Iish Smith, super lovable guy, you know, great teammates, super hard worker, couldn't shoot really at all. I mean, he had his moments, but he was incredibly unreliable. As a catch-and-shooter, he was pretty hopeless. And that's a problem. That's a significant problem to have a guard who cannot shoot, particularly when it's a ball handler

because all the other team has to do, and all the teams did do, in fact, was just sag off into the paint and invite him to drive. And though for the first couple years in Detroit, he had this kind of off-the-dribble, fade-away mid-range shot that was somewhat respectable, that went away in his third season. and, you know, this culminated in the series against the Bucks in which he was horrendously bad. Because all they did was just back off and they say, well, either you can take a shot we want you to take or you can drive into the paints and we've got a couple guys there who are just going to stuff you and that's exactly what happened. Also was an awful fit with Luke Kennard. For whatever reason, he just made very little effort to, you know, to find Luke for open looks.

but also defenses were free to just play Luke as closely as they wanted to because they really didn't need to pay any attention to Eish outside of the paint. So, Rose, you know, and they're not a great deal of time together, but, you know, a decent number of minutes showed that he's not going to be that at all finding Luke. He's gone on record as saying, this is very encouraging, as saying that, you know, Luke thinks Luke doesn't know how good he is and he's going to put a lot of efforts into getting him open and defeating him looks.

And that's fantastic. But, you know, the minor button that is that Rose has got to be willing to take threes when Luke has the ball. Luke draws attention. He's no slouch by any means at all. He's quite a good passer. So Rose has got to be willing to spot up at the three-point line and take those shots when Luke's handling the ball and gets to him. So that's plus number two from the preseason.

And third and final plus is. Markief Morris should probably provide the piston something good off the bench. He's a guy who can create, he has a limited ability to create offense, particularly in the post. He's a big body. And if his three-point shot comes back, he kind of deserted him last season to a degree, then he should certainly be a very serviceable backup bench big. I suspect he'll play most of his minutes at power forward, and certainly his presence will give the pistons much more leeway to rest,

Griffin, assuming he's healthy, because Marquif is, you know, he's not an ideal starter at this point of his career. He could be if he can get back to his form of a couple years ago. But he's no slouch. So that's another plus for the Pistons. He provides something that they just really didn't have last year. Also, this means that the Pistons. Hopefully it will keep Dwayne Casey from icing Thonmakers is the starting power forward ever again. He did this last season, and the results were just absolutely terrible. He did it in the first game of the playoffs, too, and just Thonmaker should not be playing power forward at all. Oh, and fourth and final plus, actually, the blue Kinnard. So Kinnard just looked good. He seems to be a little bit more comfortable shooting

the ball, or rather not comfortable, confident in shooting the ball. By all accounts, the fact that he didn't shoot as much as he could have last season was just largely due to his own mentality. He seemed a bit freer about firing contested looks, particularly from the three-point line, which is great. And on the whole, he's shot very well. So there he are pluses. Now, then come the minuses. So number one minus, and I think will be the biggest problem for the pistons this year, you know, outside of factors outside of their control, like health again, or guys just completely losing their shot, is what all henceforth be calling the phantom menace. And that's Dwayne Casey, the Phantom Menace number one because sorry to fans of the Star Wars franchise, though I know

a lot of them even don't like this movie. That movie sucked. But also because Dwayne Casey is sneaky awful for this team in a variety of ways. The number one way, however, is that he is absolutely and utterly horrible running an offense. That is the kiss of death for any coach. And I think that's what made him such a, in my opinion, really, really bad hire. I think you went from Stan Van Gundy, who himself was an awesome. awful defensive coach. I think that was his primary downfall. You know, he had, you know,

myriad of flaws aside from that. But the way it is, just with offense in today's NBA, is two-thirds of winning the game. You know, you can run a really good defense. If you have, like, if you have a bad offense, you just, you're not going to win games. You know, if you have a great defense and, you know, in a decent offense, like the jazz for the last couple years, then maybe you'll probably be fine. You know, the Jazz have done very well. They've got a brilliant coach, too. The Quinn Snyder is, in my opinion, a top five coach in the league.

He's just highly innovative and just he's just an excellent coach overall. But Dwayne Casey, though he can make his defenses more than the sum of their parts, like with the Pistons last season. He took a team with no good defenders, and they were in the upper middle half of the league in terms of defensive efficiency. And credit to him for that. But he's almost guaranteed to get less than the sum of, you know, less than the sum of his team's parts on offense. He's going to get, which is a huge problem.

And in this, the Pistons moved from a horrific offensive coach in Stan Van Gundy to a bad offensive coach in Duane Kaysie. So here's what Casey does. Number one, his scheme barely exists. And typically your average NBA coach will run a scheme. They'll adjust as necessary throughout a game. game, he'll coach shots selection. He'll have his best shooters taking good shots. He'll make sure that guys take the shots they're good at and stay away from the shots they're bad at. You know, typically, you know, for example, like, you look at the Warriors. Sure, they had an

incredible amount of talent the last few seasons, probably the most talent ever assembled by an NBA team. But that's, you know, there's no denying that. But Steve Kerr's contributions as a coach, which went kind of under the radar as a result. He ran a brilliant offense, one that was just based around running all sorts of offball screens to get excellent matchups repeatedly. Of course, it's easy to get good matchups if you have a guy like Steph Curry who's going to draw two guys everywhere. But basically, it's just, it's important to run an offense that's innovative and efficient. And Dwayne Casey doesn't do that.

his offense, a lot of times, last season included, and with Toronto, barring the final season there. It should be noted, as I've said in previous episodes, it should be remembered that the Raptors did move to a more modern offense in Duane Casey's last season there. That is because the Raptors GM, Asai Ujiri, after the Raptors flamed out of the playoffs in 2017, took away the offense from Duane Casey and gave it to Nick Nurse, who eventually succeeded. him as the head coach of the Raptors. So that was Nick Nurse who formulated and ran that offense. Prior to that, Dwayne Casey's offense was based around endless isolations from Kyle Lauer and DeMarion. It was not innovative.

It did not focus on three-point shooting. It was not efficient. So unfortunately, he seems to have learned absolutely nothing from his experience in the final season with the Raptors. There was an interview published recently in which he said that he was super hyped that the Raptors won the championship because it was just. it validated to him the notion that, you know, what he was doing during his time of the Raptors worked. I don't understand.

I don't know how he reached that conclusion because what he was doing on offense was not working. And what they ultimately transitioned to in the system, the offensive system with which the Raptors would win the championship. Of course, with different talents, you know, Kauai is an amazing player. But they were utilizing an entirely different offensive system. that's a big deal. Now, Casey, last season, and with the pistons, and again, in preseason, it's basically like, you know, here's a rough scheme, and here have the ball, and we hope you can score with it. Like last season, he put an incredible beating on Blake Griffin, because just like it was with Lauer and DeRosen, it was like, here, Blake take the ball and please

do something with it, please score with it. And in his case, and in Blake's case, it's, well, you're going to take an incredible beating, just banging down the post. night after night. I'm not going to have any guys move off the ball. I'm just going to have drummond hang out in the paint, so you have two defenders there. I'm not going to have him cut to the basket. And that's what Doc Rivers did, by the way, with the Clippers. When you were playing Blake and DeAndre Jordan together, which would not be an ideal front courts these days, neither because you have two guys operating primarily down low. Sure, Griffin can shoot the three, but, you know, the high block, or the low block, rather,

and the post are really, is bread and butter still. But, uh, Doc Rivers would have DeAndre Jordan just constantly cut in the basket. He wouldn't just have him hanging around the paint, and that was very effective. But no, instead, Dwayne Casey just says, nope, take the ball, please do something with it. I'm going to have Drummond just hang around the paint for the most parts. So another defender will be nearby. I'm not going to have any guys move around the perimeter, so you're not going to have guys to find open looks.

And granted, Blake sometimes just tunnels in and doesn't pass to open guys. certainly just having nobody moving off ball. Ideally what you want to do and what, again, Doc Rivers did was have guys moving around screens while Griffin was in the post. The idea, especially in Griffin's last, you know, half season with the Clippers after Chris Paul left and Griffin was really the center of the offense is you put him, you know, back to the basket, and the opposition has two options.

And the idea is to give them two bad options. Either you run one-on-one versus Blake down low, and probably fail any scores. Or you double team him, and then you've got guys moving around screens getting open on the perimeter, taking advantage of the guy who leaves that double team and getting somebody open, and then he passes them for an open shot. And great, that's a high percentage shot at the three-point line. Or somebody cuts the basket, and that's an easy pass for him again,

because somebody's going to end up open. But Dwayne Casey says, nope, just go down the low post, please do something with it. Guys aren't going to move off the ball. guys aren't going to cut to the basket. I just need you to bang down there. And that's, you know, Griffin made it work, but it's not ideal. It's also a ton of miles on him. You know, he took a beating down low every game. And another way Casey didn't help him is by putting out lineups that were just awful with no shooters. Bruce Brown, for example, you know, again, you've got to like the guy. I mean, in my opinion, he's super likably, he's super hard

worker. He's a really good teammate. He can't shoot at all. He certainly couldn't last season. And so that's just another way. And he acknowledged this. He said, I've got to get better as a shooter because I made life a lot more difficult for Blake. And that's true. You don't have the shooters on the floor. The other team is free to cause him a ton more problems in the post. So in preseason, it was more of the same.

The offense was hideously ugly. And you might say, oh, it's just preseason. But that's no excuse for a coach not to run a good offense. I don't think he was just putting them out there and just saying, you know, just go out there and screw around. It was just more of the same from last season. You had guys taking bad shots. I mean, that's another hallmark of Casey. He doesn't focus on offense, inefficiency rather, at all.

He often has guys taking shots that they're outright bad at, like Andre Drummond, for example. Five seasons of data saying that he's one of the worst post players in the league, and Casey just boasts him up anyway. Langston Galloway, I mean, I'm just listing all of examples here. Like, Langston Galloway, Casey still has this play likes will run Lankston, or on the pick and roll for a floater from the paint, which Langston generally converts in the 30s. Stuff like that, he does not focus on efficiency.

He's allergic to off-ball screens for reasons that I absolutely cannot understand because off-ball screens are a vital part of any offense and helping guys get open and helping create mismatches. So it's just bad. It's really bad. And, you know, he's just as set in his ways about feeding minutes however he can to his favorites, like Galloway against another thing he did in Toronto was he had his favorites and they got minutes

over players who should have gotten those minutes instead. So I think, you know, by all appearances we're in for another season of a really but-ugly offense in a league that demands good offense. You have to win your games on offense now. It might be the odd game where you just play incredible defensively, you know, incredibly well defensively and win on the basis of that. you know, by and large, it's an offense first league. You got to win on offense, and Casey is probably going to hinder you toward that end. He's unlikely to get even the sum of the parts of the players on the floor,

and much more often will get less. So that was a major takeaway, you know, negative takeaway from preseason. There's always the hope that coaches will improve over the course of an offseason, like Stan Van Gunning in his last season. And this was largely the doing of Jeff Van Gundy and the assistant coaches. But they took Drummond out of the post. They put him in a different role. They started running a motion offense.

And that was successful for a while until Van Gundy and his way made no alterations. And things just went downhill. But it seems like, like I said, we're in for more of the same with Casey. Also, it seems very likely he's going to start Bruce Brown again, despite the fact that Brown can't shoot. And sure, Brown looks like he's going to have a, you know, future in the league. League is a very good defender, though he still seems to be incredibly foul prone. He was amongst all starters who took on, we have 30 or more games last season, and taking away centers who are naturally going to be more foul prone because they have to defend the rim.

So Bruce Brown amongst forwards and guards was the most foul prone starter in the league. He was also, you know, struggled a great deal fighting around screens that continued in preseason. But nonetheless, the error of the defensive specialist is over. If you can pick between a guy who plays elite defense and provides nothing on offense, especially, you know, even if you're just looking at spacing, like a guard who just absolutely cannot shoot. You know, if he's an elite driver, that helps, but Brown is not an elite driver. So if you have to pick between a guy who just absolutely cannot shoot and provides elite defense or a guy who can shoot and provides decent defense, you go with the latter 100 times out of 100,

just because offense is more important. but Brown seemingly nothing has changed and Casey seems intent on starting him anyway. And this is just another way in which Dwayne Casey is stuck in the past. I guess he just doesn't realize that, you know, how damaging it is to do that. Now, that moves us on to negative point number two. Bruce Brown still can't shoot. So Brown had rightly spoken about three-point shooting as the most important thing for him to work on over the summer. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to amounted to much.

He was very hesitant to shoot the three, only tried five of them, and he bricked all five. It looks, by all indications from the preseason, he's yet again going to struggle as a perimeter shooter. And that's a big problem. Your guards and your forwards all need to be able to space the four. Spacing is absolutely an utterly essential for offense in today's NBA, and offense, as I said, is how you win games. so that's probably going to continue to be a significant issue for the Pistons. It looks like he's improved somewhat as a driver. However, he still has the habit of driving into traffic

and then just hauling up a bad shot, in preseason he got blocked quite a bit. So it's just, it seems all but certain that Dwayne Casey is going to start him once more. And like I said, you know, you got to love Brown. He's a super hard worker. He's a really good teammate. it, but just the cost of starting a guard who cannot shoot is tremendous, especially if you've also got a center who cannot shoot, which is the case for the pistons. I've seen Marcus Smart brought up,

Marcus Smart two seasons ago, got plenty of playtime for the Celtics and was a terrible three-point shooter. However, that's not as much of an issue when you put them on the floor with four shooters, which the Celtics were often able to do because Al Horford at center is perfectly capable of stretching the floor. So it's still not ideal to have a guard out there or a forward who can't shoot. But if you've got, you know, if he's on the floor with four shooters, you kind of mitigate the impact of it. However, between then and now, obviously, you look at the fact that the NBA made the rules

changes for freedom of motion for last season, which, you know, just further skewed the relative importance of defense and offense. And so more or less, the Pistons are very, very likely going to be, yet again, the only playoff aspiring team that's going to feel the non-shooting starter. And I think that's a big problem. If Brown had managed to work himself into the low 30s, ideally the low to mid-30s as a catch-and-shoe three-point shooter, when left wide open, that would be really big for the Pistons. But it seems, again, he's just going to be out there hampering the offense. and what he can provide on defense is just very, very unlikely to mitigate the damage he's probably going to do the piss since on the other end.

So there's minus number two. Minus number three, Reggie Jackson's highly remarked upon first healthy offseason since 2015 doesn't, based on his preseason performance, seem to have amounted to anything at all. He was very, very bad. You know, sometimes guys just have runs, you know, at the beginning of season where they have trouble, opening the ball in the basket, and that was certainly the case for Jackson in preseason. However, he just doesn't look any more athletic than he was last season. One of his, you know, was a very, very significant advantage for him prior to his injury in 2016

was that he was highly athletic. That seems to be, you know, lost for the long term. And even though he had a, you know, like last season, well, you know, if we go backwards in 2016, He had a major flare-up of tendonitis, which would have been an issue for him since college. And he came back to the Pistons and just, you know, he was really, really bad in that season. And, you know, he was just slow, couldn't leap how he used to be at a terrible season. Couldn't play defense. He came back the next season looking better.

He busted his ankle. The Pistons rushed him back for a completely futile playoff push. He wasn't able to train at all over the summer because he had to rehab. And thus he came in. into last season, not looking particularly good either. He got, you know, he physically, he visibly got better as the season went on, but the hope was that he would take this past off season, this, you know, this healthy time, and really get himself, you know, regain some semblance of his former athleticism,

and that doesn't seem to be the case. And that's a shame. So, it's just disappointing. But, you know, I guess the primary thing that should be hoped for now is that he regains his touch because he was just terrible, just awful in the preseason. Number four, Thon Maker. So Thon Maker was just, he was acquired for the Piss, excuse me, from the Bucks in exchange for Stanley Johnson.

You know, it was, you know, the Pistons had nothing to lose by trying to, you know, by taking him on and hoping he would fulfill some of the potential that was attributed to him at the draft back in 2016. So Maker over the offseason worked on getting stronger because though as mentioned he was a pretty able rim protector. He was just he was very, very thin and could be easily bullied in the paints by larger centers. So he worked down getting stronger, which to some degree he seems to have succeeded. He was visibly larger. He was also working on his three-point shooting and I think his overall offense because, you know, his biggest issue.

was just that he could not provide anything on offense. And that's a big problem. I mean, there's one thing just being relatively poor on offense, which is Andre Drummond. And there's another just being an absolute zero, which is where Thonmaker was, similar to the guy whom the Pistons traded for him. So that doesn't seem to have changed at all. He did a fair job as a defender, really, in preseason. Even against Joel Embed, he did a decent job, you know, an admirable job.

Even, of course, Embed still got his baskets, but Maker really didn't make it easy. on him. And, however, though, just Thon didn't have anything to offer on offense. Still can't stretch the floor. He's a miserable interior scorer. So that unfortunately, that was, it's a significant disappointment because a Thon maker who can play defense and stretch the floor, even if he can just provide three-point shooting, reliable three-point shooting, that would have been a big thing, rather, for the pistons. But he cannot. It's possible, of course, that that will change across the course of the season, but it's a disappointment to see that. that his work over the offseason doesn't seem to have amounted to anything.

And finally, Dwayne Casey still seems to be very attached to Langston Galloway and fully intent on giving him a major role in the rotation. Galloway was at times the last season, even the sixth man in the rotation, and that's just absurd. Casey appears to like him just because he's a hard worker and can play defense. However, Galloway is just not a good player, and never across the course of an entire season in the NBA, has he been an actually good player?

He's largely out there just because presumably he can shoot. He's there as a three-point shooter. He is just a heinously unreliable three-point shooter. And despite taking the vast majority of his shots from three-point range, he's never managed a really acceptable degree of efficiency. So not a good scorer by any means. Sure, he can get hot at times and just, you know, he's a heat check.

He's what you call a heat-check shooter. He can get hot, and he can, he can just make three after three at times, but he's more likely to go completely cold than give you nothing. He can't reliably hit his catch and shoots. He's nearly useless from within the arc. I mean, he's sometimes a decent mid-range shooter, but those are shots he really don't want him to take.

He's terrible in the paint and in the restricted area. He really can't drive the baskets. He can't even reduce the likes of floaters in the paint. He, as a defender, I mean, he's decent, but he's quite undersized. He's too slow-footed to compete with the league's quicker guards. So you basically got a guy who is a shooter below average efficiency, and on the other end, I mean, he's a competent defender,

but he's not giving you much there either. There were hopes that he would fall out of the rotation this season, but those seem to have been in vain. Not only will he be in the rotation, it appears, but Casey will also once again be giving him a significant role. It's possible that'll change, but that's the way it looks right now. So that'll be it for this episode. As always, thanks for listening.

Catch you next time.